10 



MICHIGAN ROADS AND FORESTS 



that in this investigation I have been actuated 

 solely by a sense of public duty without the 

 slightest prejudice for or against any person 01 

 persons interested. In such efforts as I have 

 made to protect the service in my charge from 

 the ravages of inordinate greed it has not been 

 my custom to consider the station or power of 

 the guilty; they all look alike to me, except that 

 in my view the higher the offender the greater 

 the crime against society and law, because of the 

 force and influence of the higher example. 



Thus Ethan Allen Hitchcock to Theodore 

 Roosevelt a little more than three years ago. 



Our Lands, Forests and Coal. 



The people of the United States, represented 

 by the Federal Government, are the absolute own- 

 ers of about 173,000,000 acres of forest and for- 

 est land valued somewhere broadly at $1,500,000,- 

 000, says a Washington correspondent. The 

 present purpose of the government, approved by 

 Congress and by the country generally, is to 

 hold and to develop this vast property for the 

 benefit of the owners. Any proposal to follow 

 the methods formerly employed, under which 

 these forests and the lands incidentally included 

 with them would be turned over to private own- 

 ership at a price representing an infinitesimal 

 fraction of their value, would encounter wide- 

 spread and emphatic denunciation. 



The system which is now in operation and is> 

 to be expanded as rapidly as possible includes 

 the sale of timber, both standing and fallen, un- 

 der rules that will prevent waste and at prices 

 fair for the sawmill men who buy and for the 

 American people, the actual owners and the 

 actual sellers. Fifty years ago such a system 

 might have been both undesirable and impos- 

 sible, but the national attitude toward national 

 property has undergone a material change. Much 

 of the public domain has been stolen from those 

 whom Mr. Pinchot calls "the complacent victims 

 of plunderers," and more has been almost given 

 away. There no longer remains any sound 

 reason for the disposal of public property at 

 nominal prices. There is every reason why the 

 present owners, the people of the country col- 

 lectively, should receive a fair market value for 

 stumpage, mineral lands or mineral rights and 

 any other property belonging to them. 



The property of special and immediate inter- 

 est is the Alaska coal land. On the basis of 

 expert reports it is apparent that under the laws 

 as they now stand the price set on those vast de- 

 posits is less than one-tenth of 1 per cent of their 

 commercial value. The sale of Western farm 

 lands at nominal prices during the last half 

 century is easily defensible. The premium of 

 cheap land increased our population by millions, 

 and our national wealth by billions. No such 

 argument can be advanced in connection with 

 the Alaska coal property. Cheap land gave us 

 millions of proprietors, large and small, built 

 busy cities and gridironed an empire with rail- 

 ways. The Alaska coal beds can do little more 

 than establish a mining camp within a limited 

 area. Their sale at the now legally fixed price 

 of $10 an acre would be equivalent to a .public 

 gift to individuals or to organizations of more 

 than enough money to pay the national debt. 



Two years ago Mr. Ballinger, then at the head 

 of the General Land Office, said of the coal 

 land claimants : "In the securing of these lands 

 the unscrupulous have not hesitated to resort to 

 perjury and fraud, carrying their schemes of 

 fraud and corruption to such an extent as to 

 amount to national scandal." It will be well for 

 the country if a thorough investigation of the 

 scandal shall result in clearance of the entire 

 area and establishment of those 12,000 square 

 miles of coal fields as a possesison of the Amer- 

 ican people, etablished as are the 173,000,000 

 acres of national forests. Under new laws con- 

 tracts could then be made with responsible in- 

 dividuals or organizations under which the con- 

 tractors could make a satisfactory profit, while 

 the people would receive a fair payment for the 

 coal mined and removed. 



The sale of public lands at nominal prices 

 was an excellent investment. The conservation 

 of a vast forest area is also an excellent invest- 

 ment. Is the sale of hundreds of millions of 



dollars worth of coal now to be made at prices 

 representing less than one dollar on the thousand 

 dollars of actual commercial value? 



Secretary Roth's Comment. 

 The above items are rather timely and indi- 

 cate that the Congress might profitably busy it- 

 self with investigating the Land Office affairs 

 rather than frittering away the time and effort 

 by including the forest service and all works 

 of irrelevant matter in this much noised in- 

 vestigation whitewash. 



FOREST FIRE PROBLEM. 



(An interesting paper by Wm. G. Mather, 

 of the Cleveland Cliffs Iron Company.) 



The upper peninsula of Michigan has in 

 the past attracted much attention because of 

 its extensive mining and lumbering operations. 

 Farming has received, until recently, very 

 little consideration. The future developments, 

 however, will be along agricultural and re- 

 forestry lines because of the large areas of 

 cut-over lands. The coming of the farm is 

 a matter in which all of us have a common 

 and personal interest. It brings in a people 

 who are more closely identified with the up- 

 building of the country. They have a pocket- 

 book interest in all matters pertaining to the 

 welfare of their communities. 



In the passing of the timbered to the cleared 

 lands a condition, from every point of view 

 the most serious, confronts us, namely: 



If every man, woman and child in. the upper 

 peninsula can be brought to a full realizati. n 

 of his or her personal interest in this forest 

 fire problem, the fire hazard can be reduced 

 to a minimum. To bring each individual into 

 action and make him or her a self-constituted 

 fire warden, who will at every opportunity 

 use all the means in his power to prevent 

 and put out fire, is the one thing to be accom- 

 plished. Public sentiment can do more to 

 prevent fires than anything else, and this can 

 be brought about when the people see that 

 they have a personal interest in the matter. 

 In the destruction of standing timber by fire 

 we sustain a loss that cannot be replaced in 

 a lifetime. The taxpayer is interested because 

 it lessens the opportunity to sell his labor. 

 The fisherman is interested because it has 

 a tendency to dry up the streams. The hunter 

 is interested because it drives game out of 

 the country. We are all interested in making 

 our particular locality attractive, and what 

 is more attractive than to have our highways 

 lined with trees? This can be done by saving 

 the trees along the right of way. The women 

 in each township can with their potent influ- 

 ences help much in this direction, for surely 

 they are interested in having a nice shaded 

 driveway into town. The man who comes 

 into any locality to buy land to settle on will 

 be influenced by the appearances of the high- 

 way, farms and public grounds. The home 

 or school with trees is much more attractive 

 than without. How is it with your town 

 today? The highway commission, in laying 

 out and constructing highways, can easily 

 select tre.es that can be saved along the right 

 of way. 



The lumberman, in cutting timber for the 

 market, finds trees that he cannot use and 

 leaves them standing. For shade an orna- 

 mental purposes they are just as good as any, 

 and if saved can be made to serve a very 

 useful purpose. How many places can you 

 call to mind where the people would be glad 

 to have such trees in their locality? They 

 pay out large sums of money and wait for 

 years for what we already have. Shall we 

 allow these trees to be destroyed, when they 

 add so much to the value and attractiveness 

 of our homes and the comfort and pleasure 

 uf cur families? 



We have laws regarding forest fires. The 

 necessity, however, of harshly enforcing these 

 laws against those who are careless and ig- 

 norant of them makes the careless violators 

 indifferent and ofttimes enemies to the com- 



mon interest. A great deal can be accom- 

 plished by the schools of the upper peninsula, 

 if the scholars are properly instructed in the 

 value of the standing green timber and in the 

 methods of preserving it for the future devel- 

 opment of the country. 



A few minutes may profitably be given each 

 school day to the subject of fire and the pro- 

 tection of the standing green timber, espe- 

 cially along the highways, around the homes 

 and school grounds, and for windbreaks in 

 exposed places, the protection of the small 

 green timber along the streams, their head- 

 waters and drainage districts. 



In a timbered country like the upper penin- 

 sula, the people are inclined to look at the 

 commercial value of timber as its only value, 

 but as the country develops we will all realize 

 that the trees we save along our highways, 

 around our homes, schools and shady groves 

 here and there for picnic grounds, along the 

 banks of some of our favorite streams, will 

 be of more value to us standing than they 

 can possibly be commercially because of the 

 fact that we can leave in them a heritage of 

 useful good to our children and children's 

 children. Let us all become active members 

 of the Upper Peninsula Tree Protective Asso- 

 ciation and do our part in this great patriotic 

 work. 





OPTIMISTIC ON OUR LUMBER SUPPLY 



Thomas H. Shevlin of Minneapolis, one of 

 the largest lumber manufacturers and timber 

 owners in the United States, is full of optim- 

 ism in regard to the future of the American 

 forest. He says it is "all rot" to get alarmed 

 over "cur disappearing forests." 



"The fact is not generally appreciated that 

 the Government has a forest reserve of 

 .Hi."), 000,000 acres of land, much of which is 

 timbered," Mr. Shevlin added. "Through its 

 forestry department the Government proposes 

 cutting timber in a scientific fashion by fell- 

 ing only matured trees and burning the debris 

 and to patrol the forests against fire. 



"The example set by the Government for 

 large private owners is being followed by 

 private owners to a reasonable extent, but the 

 Government is free from taxation, whereas the 

 individual owner is heavily taxed in some 

 parts of the United States, and to carry on 

 business profitably he is compelled to cut tim- 

 ber clean. If laws are passed that land shall 

 be taxed more lightly after a cutting has 

 been made owners can afford to follow the 

 Government's example to the letter. We can 

 go on cutting and still have a perpetual forest. 



"The United States last year consumed 540 

 feet of lumber per capita, against England's 

 87 and France's 37. As we build more and 

 more of imperishable materials, such as iron 

 and cement, the consumption of lumber per 

 capita will decrease, while the price of lumber 

 will increase and will in itself bring about a 

 decreased consumption." 



The above statement may have been made 

 in good faith and with good intentions, but it 

 is the very kind of "rot," to use Mr. Shev- 

 lin's term, that has prevented our States and 

 nation from doing something to preserve their 

 forests. Mr. Shevlin is one of the very men 

 who have helped to denude the Lake Region 

 "townshipwise" and convert our forests into 

 unsightly cut and burned over wastelands by 

 the millions of acres. When Massachusetts 

 cut more pine from her few abandoned pas- 

 tures than the entire pine cut of Michigan 

 amounts to (see latest report of United States 

 LM.vennm-nt) the forest seems pretty well de- 

 stroyed, and it is not the friends of forestry 

 who are talking "rot," but Mr. Shevlin and 

 his kind. 



The Chesbrough Lumber Company, of Em- 

 erson, is using a log hauler for handling its 

 logs. It has a five-mile haul to its mill at 

 Emerson, and the hauler makes four trips a 

 day, averaging 150,000 feet a day. The mill 

 cuts about 17,000,000 feet during the season. 



